Picture perfect

MAKING giant flat television screens may one day be possible now that a way has been found to seamlessly stitch liquid crystal displays together. Electronics giant Philips is so impressed with the idea that it has bought a stake in the company that dreamt it up, Rainbow Displays of Endicott in New York state.

Simply making LCD panels larger is impractical because LCDs are made by depositing all the components on a glass plate in a precise pattern. The risk of defects, which appear as an all-too obvious permanently-lit pixel, increases as the area of the panel increases.

And until now, tiling together several LCD panels to make bigger displays, as several Japanese companies are attempting to do, has not worked because the joints always showed. One of Rainbow Displays's vice-presidents, Stephen Sedaker, thinks they are chasing a red herring by trying to make the seams between panels mechanically perfect. ...

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